Hey DMs, how much flavor do you add to your combats?
Hi, I’m a dm with 3ish years of experience and I’m just wondering: how much do you reward players for being creative in combat? And, on that note, do you add flavor on certain attacks?
As an example, whenever my party is fighting large, brutish creatures, I often move the players 15-30 feet back if they take major damage, or let the boss pick one of them up (grapple check) and throw them 60 feet into a wall or smthn.
As another example, I had a player riding a warhorse charge at an enemy who had their back to a cliff wall. I had the enemy (a weak minion btw) make a con save against being stunned from, y’know, being slammed into a rock by a 600 lb animal.
A final example, to really show you what I mean, is that I had a boss, a dragon-golem. The players had the boss surrounded and a couple of them climbing on it - a good rhythm. I saw it was at half hp and gave had it freak out and grab one of them and charge through the whole group, forcing them to make Dex saves to avoid its mass. So basically I replaced its normal attacks that round with a massive AOE that wasn’t on its statblock, but was fairly balanced for what the thing could actually do. At the end of the round, the party lost sight of it and now one of the players was forced into a one-on-one for a single round as the rest dashed to catch up through the wreckage of a couple buildings the boss crashed through.
I use things like this to 1) encourage and reward my players to use their environment and be clever in combat, and 2) switch up the pace of a fight to keep them on their toes and add motion and environmental consequences.
So DM’s does anyone else do things similar to this and/or what’s your thoughts?